To provide a wide selection of products that are readily available for delivery, many merchants (whether engaging in electronic or conventional “brick and mortar” commerce) may store those products in warehouses, fulfillment centers, or other inventory facilities. Keeping items in inventory may provide numerous benefits, such as, for example, accommodating variations in customer demand and/or a manufacturer or distributor's ability to supply those items. Typically, holding some quantities of a particular product “in stock” may enable a merchant to make such product available to customers in a more consistent fashion.
However, storing inventory is not without cost. For example, providing a physical facility in which to store inventory presents recurring infrastructure costs directly attributable to the inventory items stored in the facility. Further, while items are in storage awaiting sale, debt or capital costs associated with acquiring the items may accumulate. Items being held in inventory may also depreciate, become obsolete, expire or spoil (e.g., in the case of perishable items), become damaged, or otherwise incur costs attributable to holding. When these various inventory holding costs are considered, having too much inventory may also be a concern, as accumulating costs may erode inventory value.
Determining optimal target inventory levels may require that a merchant accurately estimate market demand for an item during an upcoming planning period (and possibly beyond). Accurate inventory planning may also involve estimating lead times needed for replenishing the merchant's inventory of the item. Further complicating the inventory planning efforts, one or more other merchants (“hosted merchants”) may in some instances offer the same item via the same sales channel, and thereby introduce additional variability into the particular merchant's forecasted inventory requirements vis-à-vis the estimated market demand. For example, a particular merchant (“host entity”) having an established sales infrastructure may benefit by offering available sales channel resources to one or more hosted merchants. In this way, the hosted merchants may benefit from the host entity's established sales infrastructure, while the host entity offering the sales channel resources may benefit from fees or commissions paid by the hosted merchants for use of the host entity's established sales channel. However, estimating optimal target inventory levels for the host entity is complicated by the presence of the hosted merchants' product offerings, which may compete with the host entity's own product offering. Without accounting for the presence of the hosted merchants' competing offer within the same sales channel, traditional methods of inventory planning may significantly overestimate the host entity's target inventory levels.
Specific embodiments are shown by way of example in the drawings and will be described herein in detail. It should be understood, however, that the drawings and detailed description are not intended to limit the claims to the particular embodiments disclosed, even where only a single embodiment is described with respect to a particular feature. On the contrary, the intent is to cover all modifications, equivalents and alternatives falling within the spirit and scope of the present invention as defined by the appended claims. Examples of features provided in the disclosure are intended to be illustrative rather than restrictive unless stated otherwise.
The headings used herein are for organizational purposes only and are not meant to be used to limit the scope of the description. As used throughout this application, the word “may” is used in a permissive sense (i.e., meaning having the potential to), rather than the mandatory sense (i.e., meaning must). The words “include,” “including,” and “includes” indicate open-ended relationships and therefore mean including, but not limited to. Similarly, the words “have,” “having,” and “has” also indicate open-ended relationships, and thus mean having, but not limited to. The terms “first,” “second,” “third,” and so forth as used herein are used as labels for nouns that they precede, and do not imply any type of ordering (e.g., spatial, temporal, logical, etc.) unless such an ordering is otherwise explicitly indicated.
Various components may be described as “configured to” perform a task or tasks. In such contexts, “configured to” is a broad recitation generally meaning “having structure that” performs the task or tasks during operation. As such, the component can be configured to perform the task even when the component is not currently performing that task (e.g., a computer system may be configured to perform operations even when the operations are not currently being performed). In some contexts, “configured to” may be a broad recitation of structure generally meaning “having circuitry that” performs the task or tasks during operation. As such, the component can be configured to perform the task even when the component is not currently on. In general, the circuitry that forms the structure corresponding to “configured to” may include hardware circuits.
Various components may be described as performing a task or tasks, for convenience in the description. Such descriptions should be interpreted as including the phrase “configured to.” Reciting a component that is configured to perform one or more tasks is expressly intended not to invoke 35 U.S.C. §112, paragraph six, interpretation for that component.
The scope of the present disclosure includes any feature or combination of features disclosed herein (either explicitly or implicitly), or any generalization thereof, whether or not it mitigates any or all of the problems addressed herein. Accordingly, new claims may be formulated during prosecution of this application (or an application claiming priority thereto) to any such combination of features. In particular, with reference to the appended claims, features from dependent claims may be combined with those of the independent claims and features from respective independent claims may be combined in any appropriate manner and not merely in the specific combinations enumerated in the appended claims.